The parents are heart-broken over the deaths of
their children and they are calling for those responsible for the "tofu dreg"
school buildings to be found.

The central government says that it will
conduct a thorough investigation.

The investigators go to the school principal,
who says: We submitted the proposal to inspect/enhance the school building to
the Department of Education a long time ago.

The investigators go to the Department of
Education, which says: We submitted the inspection/construction report to the
city/county government leaders a long time ago.

The investigators go to the city/county
government leaders, who say: We don't have money -- such a document says that
the construction cost for a school building is XXX RMB per square meter and we
only have so much in the budget for education. What can we do? We
ask the provincial government for money, but they won't give it to us.

The investigators go to the provincial
government leaders, who say: The central government has stipulated out that the
education budget will come from the city/county governments themselves.

The investigators go to the architect, who
says: The code requires the building to withstand a magnitude 7 earthquake.
But along comes a magnitude 8 earthquake. What can I do?

The investigators go to the construction team,
which says: The prefabricated slabs can collapse easily, but aren't they
cheaper? The budget is just so much. What can we do?

The investigators go to the quality assurance
inspector, who says: Party A wants the building to be delivered
immediately. Who has the time to check everything out in detail?

I write these things not so much to heap scorn
on "the bureaucrats passing the buck around," but because I do not know who is
to be specifically blamed. The school, the department of education, the
city/county government leaders, the provincial government leaders, the
architect, the construction team, the quality inspector ... they also seem to
have a moral responsibility but it is not clear who bears legal responsibility.

...

Under the following circumstances, it is easy
to determine legal responsibility:

(1) The construction team skimps on
material in order to increase its profits, in which case the construction
team and the quality acceptance inspector have legal responsibility.

(2) The architect was sloppy and did not
establish shock-resistant measures in accordance with the building code, in
which case the architect and the quality acceptance inspector have legal
responsibility.

(3) The education department and the local
government were involved in corrupt practice or otherwise take away school
construction funds, or else they accepted bribes to award the construction
projects to unqualified builders, in which case the relevant officials have
legal responsibility.

(4) The government officials decided to "do
nothing" about the reports on dangerous buildings in spite of having
adequate funds and resources, in which case they have legal responsibility.

Many people were irate when the issue of
"tofu dreg school buildings" was exposed. This is understandable among
the disaster victims, especially the parents whose children were injured or
dead. But for the media and the "public intellectuals," if they want to
reflect, they ought to reflect rationally. Many of these people act as
if they personally witnessed the "corrupt officials" accepting bribes from the
"construction team." But I prefer to withhold my conclusion until the
following facts become clear:

What is the ratio of collapsed school
buildings compared to other large buildings?

What is the quake-resistant standard of
the collapsed school buildings compared to the existing standards?

What is the actual capital investment in
the collapsed school buildings compared to the local standards for school
buildings?

It is not as if I don't want to jump out and
scold people. After all, it is joyful to scold people and it draws a
large audience. But I thought that the media and public intellectuals
should have the courage to acknowledge their own ignorance, which is just as
important as the courage to scold people.

The distinction between rational reflection
and abusive reflection lies in the fact only the former is capable of coming
up with constructive solutions. For example: Should the shock-resistant
standards be revised? Should the architectural designs for classroom
buildings be revised? Should the education investment relationship among
the various levels of government be revised? How to increase the
transparency in bidding for public construction project? What is the
qualification to become a quality acceptance inspector? How to increase
the investment in basic education and its corresponding transparency?
How to inspect and reinforce all the school buildings in the seismically
active areas? ... Meanwhile, abusive reflection usually
leads to only one conclusion: Kill the corrupt officials!

Many people like to demand to "kill the
corrupt officials" whenever something happens. I tend to feel that the
"tofu dreg projects" reveal that there is a lack of professional ethics in
many Chinese industries and occupations. If a quality acceptance
inspector fails to do his job, should the "corrupt officials" be blamed?
You may say that "at the root of the problems, the corrupt officials are to be
blamed." If all the Chinese people believe this logic, they will sit
down and do nothing except to hurl invectives. Many people often feel
that "killing a few corrupt officials" will solve the problem. The
emperor Zhu Yuanchang killed many "corrupt officials" but the Ming dynasty was
one of the most corrupt ever. Following the spirit of the rule of law, I
feel that any punishment must be based upon knowing the following: The
evidence shows that a certain person at a certain time at a certain place used
a certain method to break a certain law.

The distinction between the spirit of the
rule of law and the spirit of "class struggle" lies in the basis of
determining whether a crime was committed depends on the individual's actions
and not his "group identity" (such as being a landlord, or a rich peasant, or
a government official, or a real estate developer, or an economist, or a
democratic movement activist, or a 'wheeler' ...). ...

(Southern
Weekend) Fuxin Elementary School Number Two, Mianzhu city: How was the
collapsed school building constructed? By Ding Buzhi and Zhu Hongjun.
May 29, 2008.

[in translation]

Half a month since the earthquake took place,
Elementary School Number Two in Fuxin Town, Mianzhu City in which 127 students
died under a collapsed classroom building is still in the vortex of a whirlpool.

The parents of the dead school children
cannot comprehend why not a single building around the classroom building had collapsed. Most of the buildings in town including those built in the
1960's were able to survive the earthquake. Therefore, they wondered if
this classroom building was a "tofu dregs" building (that is,
shoddily constructed).

On May 25, more than 100 parents of dead
school children held framed photos of their departed love ones and walked towards Deyang City to demand an answer. On the way, Mianzhu city party
secretary Jiang Guohua got down on his knees four times to beg them to stop,
but to no avail. On the afternoon of the next day, Jiang Guohua told
Southern Weekend that a work team consisting of architectural experts from
outside Mianzhu city is presently making a thorough investigation of the
collapsed classroom building in a fair and just manner.

"If the classroom building was determined to
have an engineering problem, we will handle this seriously in accordance with
the relevant laws. We will investigate to the very bottom, and we will
provide the families with the appropriate compensation." Jiang Guohua
promised that the results of the examination will be announced within one
month.

The Southern Weekend reporters interviewed
the designer, the builder, the town party secretary at the time and
reconstructed the entire construction process of the school building nineteen
years ago. We wanted to try to determine if the deaths of the 127
students was due to a natural disaster or a manmade one.

One parent said, "Even the homes that we
built for ourselves wouldn't be using such slim steel bars. Who designed this
classroom building? Who built it? Who allowed it
to pass inspection?"

According to a teacher who was at the scene,
the Fuxin Number Two Elementary School building collapsed in less than 10
seconds' time.

At 14:28 on the afternoon of May 12, 2008,
two minutes before the classes started, the teachers were still in their office
building.
Most of the students had just woke up from their midday nap. Without
any warning, the three-story classroom building began to shake violently and
collapsed, with almost 200 surprised and scared children were buried in the
rubble. "The building fell down like a heap." Just over ten
minutes after the earthquake, Sang Min (the mother of the Number Two Sixth
Grade student Zhang Yi) rode to the school on her bicycle and she saw only a
rubble.

A tally afterwards showed that 127 students
died in this incident. Dozens of students were wounded. Most of
the students were the only sons or daughters in their families. The parents who heard the
news rushed over to the scene and began to dig madly with their bare hands.
They pulled up the huge concrete slabs with their hands, drawing blood on
their own bodies.

Zhang Qi of the Number One Sixth Grade was
eventually found by his father Zhang Zhongjun at the mouth of the stairway
exit. Both Zhang Zhongjun and his wife come from three generations of
only sons or daughters. The family of 15 people from both sides of the
family sieved through the rubble. In just over 20 days, Zhang Qi would
have graduated from here. "He could have gotten out of the building with
just one or two more steps. The distance between life and death was as
thin as a thread." Zhang Zhongjun with the blood-shot eyes used his two
fingers to draw a thin line.

When night fell that night, Sang Min found
his son Zhang Yi in the stairwell of the rubble. His entire body was
broken and his face was mashed up. Since all the school children wore
uniforms, many parents could not identify their own children. Sang Ming
identified the body of her son through the t-shirt that he wore underneath the
school uniform.

Liu Minggui found his daughter Liu Lianyu at
11am on the next morning. At her moment of death, she had her hands
upwards: the building was collapsing on her.

The students in the two classes of the Fourth Grade
were taking tests in the same classroom on the first floor. When the
disaster struck, the 75 students could not exit out of the doorway all at
once. 39 of them perished. The students of the Grade Three were
called out by their teacher to "breath in some fresh air" after their
midday
nap, and they all survived. According to the parents, Fuxin Elementary
School Number Two used to be the Wufu Middle School. In 2007, Fuxin and
Wufu towns merged together and the schools were reorganized. The former Wufu Middle School was merged with another middle school, and the vacated
classroom building became the Fuxin Number Two Elementary School.

Last September, the Grades Three To Six
students moved into the empty three-story classroom building. Previously,
they were studying in the tiled buildings on the side. Those tiled
buildings were still standing after the earthquake. Thus, the Grade One
and Two students who did not move into the classroom building survived.

It was not only those tiled buildings.
Basically, there were no collapsed buildings in the town except for this
classroom building. This was hard to accept for the parents who lost their cihldren. They found out at the scene that the exterior walls fell down
completely and had no linkage with any concrete reinforced with steel bars.
It all came down like a stack of building blocks. The broken main beam
had four steel beams of uneven widths, with the smallest one about the width
of an adult's small finger. "If we were building our own houses, we
wouldn't use steel bars this small," said one parent. "Who designed this
classroom building? Who built it? Who let it pass inspection?

One of the reason why the classroom building
collapsed was that the architectural design did not consider any
earthquake-proof features. The blueprint did not have the structural
pillars that resist earthquakes.

On May 25, a teacher named Wu was found near
the collapsed school building. Wu was responsible for logistics at the
school before. After the earthquake, Wu rushed over from Lanzhou city.
When he saw that the tiled buildings around the school were standing, he
breathed a sigh of relief. Those buildings were constructed during his
term. According to him, the three-story classroom building began construction in 1988
under the leadeship of the former Wufu Elementary School principal Liu Weijing
in the capacity of the town education committee executive director.

On the evening of that day, the Southern
Weekend reporter reached the now retired Liu Weijing at his home. Liu
Weijing said that on the previous day, the Mianzhu city disciplinary committee
and department of education had sent people to ask him about construction at
the Fuxin Number Two Elementary School.

Liu Weijing said that the town was
responsible for its schools in that era. Since the school facilities
consisted only of four single-storey houses, it was far from adequate.
In 1988, due to the policy of free nine-year education, the town decided to
construct a school building. At the time, the construction was assigned
to a constructing team in Dongbei town (Mianzhu city), whose leader was Zhang
Yuesheng.

At a certain farm in Dongbei town, the
Southern Weekend reporter found Zhang Yuesheng who has changed profession.
According to him, the person who was directly responsible for the construction
was deputy director Jiang Xuyin.

Many years has passed since. Like Zhang
Yuesheng, Jiang Xuyin is no longer in the construction business. He said
that on the morning of that day, the Mianzhu city party disciplinary committee
people had obtained the original construction information from him. Most
important were the blueprint for the Wufu Middle School and the inspection
documents.

The project completion report provided by
Jiang for the Wufu Middle School project showed that in 1988, the Wufu town
government decided to invest 160,000 RMB to build a classroom building at the Wufu Middle School. Most astonishingly, the blueprint for the
classroom
building was a photocopy.

"We used a reproduced blueprint for the
building," said Jiang Xuyin. "This blueprint was copied from that for
the Shidi Middle School in nearby Shidi own." These blueprints were approved
by the Mianzhu county (note: Mianzhi had not been promoted from a county to a
city at the time) eduction department. "During the construction, the town
made more demands and the blueprint was revised in many places." Jiang
Xuyin said that the changes included adding another floor, changing the
rooftop, making the rectangular roof beams smaller and so on.

The aforementioned report stated that the
building consists of three stories, with four classrooms per floor occupying
1,073 square meters. Construction began in June 1988 and was completed
in May 1989. The project took 11 months, which was 5 months longer than
the original schedule. The reason for the delay was that the original
two-storey design was altered to three storeys. At the time of the
change, the two-storey was about to be completed. Therefore, "all the
materials had to be reconsidered."

On the construction blueprint, the other
changes included changing the rectangular beam from 500mm x 240 mm to 500mm x
200mm and the rooftop from tiles to flat concrete slabs. Apart from
this, Jiang Xuyin said that all construction materials including steel bars,
concrete and the processes adhered strictly to the blueprint.

Jiang said that one of the reasons why the
classroom building collapsed during the earthquake was that the architectural
design was flawed. The blueprint did not consider any shock-resistant
functionalities. He said that the blueprint did not the structural
pillars that are the main features to resist earthquakes. In
architecture, the structural pillars placed in multi-storey buildings with
reinforced steel bars and connected to the surrounding beams and the
foundations in order to increase the earthquake resistance of the building.

He thought that those kinds of
buildings were designed to withstand earthquakes of as much as magnitude 11.

At the time, the bill for the construction of
the school buildings was first footed by the construction team. In 1991,
the construction team prompted the Wufu town government for payment.

The quality acceptance document provided by
Jiang Xuyin showed that the quality assurance team held this opinion: "The
construction quality met all requirements. Payment is agreed upon." The
quality acceptance units included Wufu Middle School, Wufu town government,
Dongjiao United Construction team and its supervising department and the
Number Three Design Studio of the Mianzhu County Construction Planning
Institute. At the time, there was no supervisory department for
construction.

Then Wufu town party secretary and education
committee director was Sun Anquan. He is presently the vice-chairman of
the Mianzhu city Communist Party Political Consultative Conference.
According to the recollection of Sun Anquan, the county department of
education allocated 50,000 RMB for the construction of Wufu Middle School.
The Wufu town government was responsible for the remaining costs. During
the school construction, the town party committee's main job was to mediate
and find the funds. The money available at the time was far from enough.

Liu Weijing said that the budget was tight
and savings in the school construction was made as much as possible.
This was a situation that existed everywhere. He said that when Wufu
county rebuilt the elementary schools (which were one-storey buildings) in
1990, the school came up with its own blueprints. Based upon the prices
at the time, the architectural design fees were around 3 RMB per square meter.
That is to say, the 1,000+ square meter Wufu Middle School would cost more
than 3,000 RMB in architectural fees. That money was enough to build
half a classroom.

At the time, the construction team paid for
the construction of the classroom building up front. Jiang ZXuyin said that
in 1991, they had demanded payment from Wufu town. The Southern Weekend
reporter saw that the demand for payment notice indicated that the classroom building consisted of three projects for Wufu town totalling 270,000 RMB.
The construction team had fronted 120,000 RMB so far. "The town budget
was tight, so they hoped to spend less for more," Said Jiang Xuyin. The
money was eventually paid off several years later through additional
educational levies and loans.

The project completion report also mentioned
that during the construction, the pillar on the second floor was discovered
not to have set two days after being poured due to problems with the quality
of the concrete. The workers were organized to demolish that section and
then the concrete was poured again. "In spite of severe capital
shortage, the three-storey building was successfully completed."

The parent Xiong Yonghao who lost a child
said that bricks fragments, wood particles and other material were visible to
the eye in the cross-section of a weight-bearing pillar that had snapped.

Nineteen years have passed. There have
been several waves of persons in charges at the Wufu Middle School, the town
government and the Mianzhu city education department. But this classroom
building was not repaired or reinforced in any significant way during this
period.

According to Fuxin Middle School
vice-principal Li Hua, the safety inspections for school buildings is
conducted mainly by the education department and the schools themselves.
There is routine safety inspection each year.

According to Huang Qingtai who lost a
grandchild, he had asked the current school principal whether there was any
problem with the classroom building detected during the annual routine
inspection. He received the answer: There was no notice from above
concerning any reconstruction. "When you are sick, do you go to see the
doctor or do you wait for the doctor to look you up?" He believes that
the annual routine inspection was not up to standard.

The parents of the dead school children are
bitter about the fact that this classroom building accommodates more than 300
students but only has a single passageway that is 2 meters wide. There
is no fire safety exit. Li Hua mentioned that the classroom building at
another middle school also only has one stairwell. After the inspection
by the fire department and the education department, that school installed an
additional stairwell last year. That new stairwell proved to be very
useful during the earthquake.

According to Mianzhu city Department of
Education director Tang Jiancheng, the Fuxin Number Two Elementary School
classroom building should have additional stairwells as well. But since
it is connected to the teachers' office building on the second floor by a
bridge, that was taken to be an escape exit. In reality, that
life-saving iron bridge broke apart as soon as the earthquake hit. Thus,
the students in the building could only rush towards the one stairwell.

Sang Min said that the bodies of 50 to 60
students were found at the collapsed stairwell after the earthquake. The
bodies of the students were stacked one on top of another.

A certain director of an institute of
architectural design and study in Jiangsu province said that he was making
assessments in the disaster zone after the earthquake. He inspected the Fuxin Number Two Elementary Two School and he confirmed that the entire
classroom
building did not have structural pillars. This was a design flaw in the
building.

This expert also said that he was able to to
lift a brick off the wall easily: "This proves that the building was low
on concrete composition." He thought that he was certain that there
were
definitely problems in the construction.

Xiong Yonghao is the father of a deceased
sudent. He observed that in a broken pillar there were
visible brick pieces and wood in the cross-section of a broken concrete-steel
section. Xiong Yonghao works in construction himself. After the
incident, he was elected by the parents of the deceased schoolchildren to work
with the experts to examine the classroom building. He thought that this
kind of concrete pillar is less able to bear the weight.

As to how a two-storey building can be
altered to three storeys, these experts said that construction should not be
allowed to proceed without discussion and reforcement.

When Huang Chenggang received a telephone
call from the Southern Weekend reporter, he learned that the collapsed
building was based upon the blueprint that he drew. For the past 19
years, he had been unaware of this.

Jiang Xuyin said that the blueprint had been
drawn by Huang Chenggang. The bluepirnt also had the signature of
Mianzhu city Architectural Planning Design Department Number Three Design
Office senior worker Gao Gongkong. At the time, Huang Chenggang was a
technician at the Shidi Construction Company and he became the manager of the
company eventually. Today, he has changed profession to become the sales
manager of a white wine enterprise. Our reporter was able to contact
Huang Chenggang by telephone.

On the evening of May 26, Huang Chenggang
received the call from the Southern Weekend reporter and that was when he found out
that the collapsed school building was based upon an architectural blueprint
that he drew. Previous to that, he had been totally unaware for the past
19 years. During this earthquake, his own niece was buried in the rubble
of Fuxin Number Two Elementary School. When his own daughter viewed the
scene of the disaster, she was bitter about the designer and the builder.
When she found out that his father was the original author of the blueprint of
the school building, she did not know whether to laugh or cry.

Huang Chenggang said that he was depending on
the Mianzhu county architectural design department. If the blueprint was
approved by the design department, it was usable.

"How can a photocopied blueprint be used for
construction?" Huang Chenggang believed that while a design blueprint can be
reproduced, the geological survey cannot be reproduced. The geological
condition for each location is different. It was a mistake to be using
a photocopied blueprint to begin construction.

Without seeing the structural diagram, Huang
Chenggang cannot recall whether the blueprint had structural pillars. At
the time, many low buildings did not have structural pillars, and there were
no strong state requirements to do so.

As to why the Shidi Middle School which had
the same design did not collapse, he thought that "if the construction had
adhered to the design blueprint, there wouldn't be any problems." He believed
that his design blueprint had been pirated and then modified arbitrarily.
"I do not admit to being the designer of the Fuxin Number Two Elementary
School," said Huang Chenggang.

According to the director of an institute of
architectural design of a certain university in Jiangsu, the building
blueprint is now available along with the actual condition of the building after
the earthquake. When the building is simulated, it will be known whether
the building collapse was due to the building design or the construction
process.

On May 26, Mianzhu city party secretary Jiang
Guohua was interviewed by Southern Weekend. He said that the city has
sent out a team to investigate the problems about the classroom building of the Fuxin Number Two Elementary School in a thorough manner. "In order to
guarantee the independent nature of the investigation, the team members are
mostly Sichuan province experts with none of the experts in Mianzhi city being
included. We have asked the provincial government and other cities to
cooperate by sending their experts. The investigation will be fair and
just."

In 1992, Sang Min graduated from this school
building. She said that the school building had a new paint job after
some cracks were found. Fifteen years later, her son Zhang Yi moved into
the same school building. Eight months later, he was buried in the
rubble.

A white banner hangs on the road outside
the school with words written in blood. The parents bit on their fingers
and use blood to write down the names of their names and eternal ages: Liu Zhimei, 10 and a half years old; Liu Guiyu, 11 years old; Zhang Yi, 12 years
old; Zhang Qi, 13 years old ... the Fuxin Number Two Elementary School
classroom building, dead at 19 years old.

After the earthquake, the parents erected a
temporary mourning hall by the rubble of the classroom building. On May 25
in the sunlight, eight piles of rubble dug up during the rescue surrounded the
mourning hall like eight great graves. The parents hugged framed
photographs of their dead children and spread themselves around the mourning
hall.

Small children from different grades hid
behind the photograph frames in this small temporary mourning hall. The
fames contained black flowers and are spaced evenly like school desks.
The difference is that a mourning hall has taken the place of the classrooms.
The students are childish, pure and brilliant. Each of them are
wordlessly smiling in the photos and their eyes are looking at the world
outside the mourning hall. It is as if the class is not over yet, the
school bell hasn't rung yet and they haven't left.

(SCMP) Parents mourn the loss of a generation.
Ng Tze-wei in Mianzhu and Bill Savadove in
Dujiangyan. June 2, 2008.

The parents whose
children died when Fuxin No2 Primary School collapsed in the Sichuan quake
mourned their loss yesterday amid the building's ruins and marched to the
government office to demand justice. In the heat, the walk from Fuxin to
Mianzhu town took longer than usual. But the parents of about 50 children - each
tightly clutching photos of their lost children - insisted on making the
90-minute journey, saying they wanted to do something for their lost ones on
this day. "It's Children's Day. We always take our children out on this
day, since they do not have to go to school," said Xiong Ying, whose daughter
Liu Xinyue would have turned 11 on May 23. "We want to show our children what
the town looks like, and also the beautiful tents we heard of, which they would
like very much."

They also wanted an official explanation for
what they believed was a tragedy tied to "tofu projects" - namely shoddy
construction and corruption. They were expecting some information yesterday,
but were told they would have to wait at least until June 20. But the
parents abandoned the march when another group of emotional parents from
Jiulong Primary School joined them. The Fuxin parents did not want to appear
to be troublemakers and they believed Jiulong's collapse was a different case.

"We do not trust the local government. We
hope the central government can intervene and help us," said single father
Wang Xingxi, a construction worker. "I regret not having spent enough time
with her," he said on the verge of crying for his daughter. "I only seek
justice for her."

In Fuxin, only the three-storey school
building collapsed. All buildings nearby remained intact. After the
quake, parents rushed to the school and used their hands trying to dig out
their children. They were devastated to find 127 bodies. Amid the debris, they
also found that no steel reinforcements held the walls to the ground, some
steel rods were thinner than fingers, and the concrete was mixed with wood and
brick pieces.

On May 25, about 100 angry parents marched to
the Deyang city government offices to find out what caused the collapse of the
school apart from the quake. Jiang Guohua , the party secretary of Mianzhu, a
city under Deyang who administers Fuxin, knelt four times begging the parents
not to continue their march. Since then experts have been collecting
samples of the building's foundation and debris.

Shortly after dawn yesterday, parents began
gathering at the school ruins, placing the photos of their lost children in a
tent pitched on the debris. Wreaths and banners that read "Our children died
unjustly" and "Our children did not die in an earthquake but shoddy
construction" lined the road to the school. A banner "June 1st in Heaven" was
hung across the tent.

Some teachers also returned to mourn, but
they were criticised by the parents, who claimed that they had done little to
save their children. Media reports said that only one of the teachers died in
the quake. The township chief and vice-chiefs paid their respects in the
morning, but could not give parents any answers.

Deyang's planning department vice-chief Deng
Yu also confirmed that the original blueprint was a photocopy of another
school in the area; more bad news the parents already knew from a newspaper
report.

Xiong Yonghao, father of grade five student
Xiong Yin, said the government had yet to provide safety assessment reports
and the original approval certificate of the school building when construction
was completed in 1989. The parents held a quiet sit-in at the entrance to the
government's temporary control centre yesterday, refusing to go inside for
talks.

International Children’s Day was celebrated
with sadness in Mianyang, a city in the heart of earthquake-shaken Sichuan
Province. Parents in mourning arranged photos of the 128 children they lost
atop debris from the collapsed Fuxing No. 2 Primary School. They renamed the
event “Children’s Day in Heaven.”

Bi Kaiwei, father of a deceased 12-year-old,
said his daughter was a dancer with beautiful eyes. Ever since her body was
pulled from the rubble, the mother has followed a daily routine – in memorial.
Each morning she carries her daughter’s photo to what used to be the school,
and each night she brings it home.

Parental grief has spread like a pall over
Sichuan. Thousands of schools with children inside collapsed during the
magnitude 8 earthquake on the afternoon of May 12. Many young victims were
killed by falling concrete and bricks.

Afterward, many parents demanded
explanations. They wanted to know why the buildings collapsed so easily.
Official data and a Caijing investigation of five crumbled schools has helped
shed light on the answer.

A Ministry of Education official, Han Jin,
told the media May 16 that 6,898 classrooms collapsed across Sichuan. Two
weeks later, the publication 21st Century Business Herald reported that nearly
2 million square meters of school space had crumbled in the quake, killing
4,737 students and injuring more than 16,000.

A government investigation of the tragedy
continues. Currently, the central government’s education and construction
ministries are divided over whether to blame the size of the earthquake or
poor quality construction. At the core of the debate is a simple question: Are
schools in China more prone to collapse than other buildings?

A graphic reply to that question can be found
at the Fuxing school site. The building where Bi’s daughter was busy studying
with classmates was completely shattered when the quake struck. But many
buildings surrounding the school survived and stand intact even today,
towering over the debris.

What happened at Fuxing mirrored tragedies in
cities across Sichuan. Two buildings at the Juyuan Middle School were the only
structures that completely collapsed in the city of Dujiangyan, killing 240
students. Similar stories were told in communities across the region,
including Mianyang, Mianzhu and Shifang.

Caijing’s investigation of five schools that
collapsed showed that none of the building sites had undergone a geological
survey prior to construction. From day one, a combination of problematic
design and poor construction, coupled with geological peril, meant these
schools were time bombs waiting to be triggered by a natural disaster.

Behind the Standards

Strong shaking can cause buildings to tumble
in one of two ways – in a brittle or ductile collapse, said Wang Bangjin, an
engineer at the Ministry of Transportation. In a brittle collapse, a building
can crumble to dust in a few seconds. In a ductile collapse, a damaged
building can stand for a short while, allowing time for an evacuation.

All of Sichuan’s quake-wrecked schools
experienced brittle collapse, according to Wang’s definition. They lacked the
reinforced concrete that allows for a ductile collapse, often saving lives.

“Brittle collapse buildings obviously fail to
meet construction standards,” said Liang Wei of the Urban Planning and Design
Institute at Tsinghua University. “Either the design or the construction
quality is below standard.”

Caijing obtained a review June 2 conducted by
the Sichuan Construction Bureau showing that the widespread destruction at the
schools was linked to a failure to meet earthquake prevention standards, poor
structural design and substandard construction.

China paid a high price before setting the
earthquake building standards in place today. The government revised the
building code after a major earthquake shattered Tangshan, a northeastern
city, claiming 240,000 lives three decades ago. The code was further upgraded
in 1989 and dubbed “the 89 standard.”

The code spells out detailed requirements for
construction materials and design with a clear goal: Buildings should remain
intact after minor shaking, receive repairable damage after moderate shaking,
and remain standing after a major earthquake.

In the years after the code was formulated,
China went through a construction boom, and relevant laws seemed to follow
suit. In 1998, the Construction Law and Earthquake Prevention Law went into
effect. Last year, the construction ministry passed a detailed earthquake
prevention regulation.

According to these laws and regulations,
school buildings were to meet a “B standard” for earthquake prevention – a
step above the C standard required for residential buildings.

The legislation was backed by investment. After a nationwide survey on the
quality of school construction in 1996, the central government set up a
program in 2001 to rebuild some shaky buildings with financing from a special
fund. From 2001 to ’05, the central government allocated more than 9 billion
yuan to renovate dangerous school buildings, giving special emphasis to those
in China’s western regions, including Sichuan. Free education in rural China
was promoted through a program that kicked off in late 2005.

The central government allocated more than
265 billion yuan for the 2005-’10 period to improve rural education and school
building quality. Local governments were required to provide matching funds.
But the blood that spilled in school yards after the earthquake testified to
poor implementation.

Collapsed in 10 Seconds

About 100 meters from the Fuxing school
stands a shop that survived the quake with a few wall cracks. The shop opened
in 1982, and more recently it was classified as a dangerous building due to
age and poor construction.

The three-story school building was completed
in 1988. Builders added the third floor at the request of school officials,
even though the original plan called for only two stories.

“The whole building crumbled to ashes in
about 10 seconds,” an eyewitness told a reporter for Southern Weekly.

“This wouldn’t have happened had the
construction quality been a little better,” Chen Yu, a mother of one of the
deceased students told Caijing.

More than half the students were killed in
hallways during their vain scramble to evacuate.

Jiang Xuyin led the team that built Fuxing’s
school. He told Caijing he knew about an earthquake resistance requirement
that said buildings must be able to sustain temblors up to magnitude 7.
Although Jiang said earthquake prevention wasn’t on his mind during the
building project, he now admits the construction was problematic. Yet he said
the structural design bore the greatest responsibility.

Experts who studied the collapsed school
found serious problems in construction quality. Every building sample failed
national standards.

Jiang’s hands shook while he spoke to Caijing.
“Taking on that (Fuxing) project was my biggest mistake ever,” he said.

The school’s blueprint copied that used for a
nearby school, with some modifications. A floor was added, wall thickness was
reduced to 24 centimeters from 37 centimeters, beam sizes were cut back, and a
slab roof was installed instead of tile.

Most of the changes were made to save money.

Caijing found and interviewed Sun Anquan, a
retired party secretary for Wufu village, home to Fuxing school. He oversaw
the construction and remembers the tight local budget at the time. The county
government provided 50,000 yuan for the project and expected the village
government and local education agency to provide the rest.

In fact, according to the contracts and
related documents, the government was so strapped for cash that Jiang’s
construction team paid 150,000 yuan up front.

A retired middle school headmaster, Yi
Ancheng, said school buildings were usually completed on tight schedules, with
low budgets. They filled a huge need, replacing classroom buildings made of
clay that leaked in the rain.

“Being able to build a new school house was
something to celebrate,” Yi said. “No one really cared whether these buildings
could withstand earthquakes.”

In 1989, the year-old school passed all
quality inspections conducted by school and local government officials, as
well as the building’s designers.

Call Them Dangerous?

School buildings are totally controlled by an
educational hierarchy. Local officials are responsible for fund-raising,
lining up design and construction bids, and quality appraisals. No third party
supervises the process.

Sichuan educators were aware of hazards and
had plans to repair dangerous school buildings. As part of the central
government’s massive, five-year investment in rural schools, Sichuan received
700 million yuan in 2007 to improve dangerous school buildings.

Curiously, it appeared few improvements were
needed across the country. In 2000, for example, only 13 million square meters
of the nation’s 9.6 trillion square meters of classroom space were reported to
the central government as dangerous. But some 2 million square meters were
shattered by the earthquake in Sichuan alone, affecting schools that were not
on the national list of dangerous buildings.

The list itself is problematic. Despite the
national campaign to identify and renovate dangerous buildings, there is no
unified standard for labeling a structure “dangerous.” Rather, building
inspections are based on a variety of local standards.

Meanwhile, some local education officials
have played down the possibility of natural disasters while competing for the
political gains that can accompany problem-free reports.

School officials also shoulder some
responsibility. One education official in Mianzhu city showed Caijing that the
local record of “dangerous” buildings did not include the Fuxing school. The
official could not say why the school was left off the list, but said that
according to the process, school officials should voluntarily file initial
reports of dangerous conditions, which would lead to follow-ups and
inspections by educational bureaus.

The building review process was also bogged
down by bureaucratic delays. Yumu Middle School in Qingjiang County, for
example, sent a dangerous building report to the local government in 2006. But
the government failed to reply during the two years before the school
collapsed in the quake, killing 275 students.

Indeed, targets of finger-pointing abound.
But a lack of funding is certainly not to blame. The budget from the central
government education bureau guaranteed that each square meter inside an
identified dangerous building in China would receive an average 400 yuan for
renovation. The available cash was even higher in Sichuan -- 500 yuan per
square meter. Construction experts told Caijing the amount was more than
enough to strengthen buildings.

In fact, the only school that withstood the
earthquake in the epicenter region -- Liu Han Hope School -- had been built
for less than 400 yuan per square meter.

Tracing the use of funds in each community,
for every project, is impossible. But the case of Juyuan Middle School is
telling. Caijing learned this quake-destroyed school last year received
200,000 yuan for construction quality improvements. The money was used for
trees, paint, new classroom windows, and power line improvements.

In the wake of the tragedy, the education
ministry and National Development and Reform Commission issued a nationwide
mandate that sets strict standards for new school building construction. But
the reins of quality control are still held by officials at various levels of
education departments of various levels.

Builders are also giving school project procedures a second look.

“The earthquake taught the construction
industry a profound lesson,” said Tsinghua’s Liang. “Besides refining the
construction standard, we should really improve the quality of construction.”